Ladies and Gentlemen, hell has indeed frozen over. Kalgan, the great Warrior and Mage-loving lead developer for Blizzard Entertainment officially declared the Life Tap nerf null and void. The nerf has been totally reversed, and better still is the fact that Kalgan also stated that there are no further plans to nerf Warlocks in Patch 2.4, period. Awesome news, for sure.Sadly, however, the motivation to reverse the change did not come via the fact that the nerf was totally class-breaking (stat-wise) and required a complete and utter PvE-revamp. In fact, it wasn't PvE-motivated at all, which is odd because the chief legitimate complaints came from that angle. The change was reversed because of a fluctuation in PvP/Arena demographics, which show Warlocks comprising a lower percentage of high-rated teams than what Blizzard expects them to. As a result, our class's performance in both PvP AND PvE is being left alone... for now.
As you're probably understanding (and probably have understood for a long time now), this change isn't a good thing overall. While this change is great for us Warlocks, it completely emphasizes the fact that Blizzard is 100% arena-oriented. This is an incredibly unfortunate reality for the raiding enthusiast out there, and I'd imagine it's not so hot for PvE devs as well. It means that PvP numbers will change your PvE experience, as Kalgan implied in his comment today:
Locks are doing pretty well overall, but what had us worried was that it appeared to us a month ago or so as though warlocks were on an uptrend. However, the evidence is strong that that trend is reversing, which means significant nerfs aren't really what we want right now (we really don't know where those numbers will settle down).
So, basically, if one class becomes overly represented in the arena, it will get nerfed. When a class is under represented, it will get buffed (as we saw with Druids back in the day). THAT, my friends, is Blizzard's master plan.
Given the outrage of the populace over the PvP/PvE issue, you'd think Blizzard would take note, actually listen to their paying customers, and change their approach to implementing game "balance." Given these recent changes, their motivation, and Kalgan's comments, I guess that's simply not the case.
Maybe hell would have to freeze over again for that to happen.
5 comments:
I think what bothers me most is that this seems to be backpeddaling on what dev's have been saying for the longest time; please refer to the following, oft-heard arguement:
Player: ZOMG NERF LOCKS PLS I JUS GOT LOLCOILED
Dev: ((insert drawn out explanantion)) ...but to be honest, the game is not balanced around single combat pvp...
I'm sorry, but 2v2 isn't THAT far off from 1v1, and would be even more assanine of a metric to guage class balance on.
Heck, it could be argued that it's class combinations that need nerfing and not individual classes. If locks become 'over-represented', maybe it's because we're good in groups, and not because we're necessarily OP.
But I digress. It all seems to be part of the plan on trying to push WoW as some kind of sporting event through the arena. If that's the case, I wish Blizzard would just separate the two completely, and allow the arena game to exist on its own.
Notice how the other half of the most-played 2v2 combo is not being touched at all by the nerf stick. Kalgan's not showing any favoritism here, now is he?
nerfs and unnerfs because of arena makes me dizzy
Dronens mom.
Six Wisconsin high school seniors were cited for disorderly conduct last week while playing outside with Nerf guns. browse around here
Post a Comment